Are Cell Boosters worth the install/price?

[danderer]

I have a similar Pepwave installation. A couple of good sources for information:

https://www.rvmobileinternet.com
https://mobilemusthave.com

 

[syjos]

When I was researching an on board network to replace my Sure Call Booster and Digital Antenna cellular antenna, Steve Mitchell was very helpful.

Doug Miller at Milltech Marine was also highly knowledgeable and informative. I bought my Poynting MIMO antenna from him. His firm specializes in AIS and recently added internet.

I also ran into the same issues with Peplinks poor consumer tech support as others mentioned. They are accustomed to dealing with tech pros, not consumers, which their products are for.

I decided to go with the less complex consumer oriented Netgear hotspot to avoid frustration. It doesn't have the features of Peplink but gets the job done. The Netgear Hotspot and Peplink antenna allowed fast internet throughout the San Juans and PNW for around $400 plus the hotspot plan. I bought a preowned Netgear from TF member.

I think it's better to pay less for the router/hotspot and buy a better antenna. Use the money saved to buy more GB and multiple hotsot plans from more than one provider.

We have the Verizon share plan for 2 phones and 2 tablets with 100 GB all year and a $5/month T-Mobile hot spot plan that can be upgraded to 100GB ($50/month) while boating and traveling. And when boating in Canada, possibly get a plan from a BC provider if T-Mobile and Verizon roaming is restrictive.

The plans are all 4g. We did not experience any slow downloads or video buffering.

The technology for wireless internet in remote areas has advance a lot in the last 30 years. I started with an analog cellular modem card plugged into a PCMCI slot on a laptop in the 90's to boosters that physically plugged into cell phones, repeater boosters and now dedicated celluar hotspots and routers.

 

[mvweebles]

I would highly recommend Doug Miller at :https://onboardwireless.com/

He has been very helpful to me in the past (sorting out AIS issues) and now has spun his business into Marine Internet as a specialty.

Super nice guy and very knowledgeable.

Thanks a lot for this referral. I wish I had found him earlier - his "selection guide" article would have made a lot of sense to me as a new-entrant. The Seabits article was more of a hardware review vs a system approach.

https://onboardwireless.com/What-is-our-most-popular-Internet-connectivity-solution_b_2.html

I originally purchased my router and antenna from 5GStore. They are fine, but their technical support is not great. Also no mention of the male-side of the new style 12VDC power connection so I'm on the hunt for that too. For setup guide, they sent a list of about 35 PDF files with nonsense names, none of which are specific to the router I purchased. They sorta "backed-up the truck and dumped" if you know what I mean. So I ended-up with about 85% of what I needed from 5GStore. Yet another example of a frustrating install.....

For those still reading, my original frustration on this thread is it wasn't much help for a new entrant into the world of long range cell/wifi kit aboard a cruising boat. I simply did not understand that an antenna would have five (5) cables coming out of it (four cell and one GPS). Without knowing this, I simply had no idea what the heck I was buying.

As it turned out, I still need two more antenna for enhanced WiFi reception so will add a Peplink 20G antenna, the two-cable little sister to the 40G I already have. These are supposedly the top-quality antennea available right now, but I could have saved some money and real estate with a single antenna with 6 cables (really, 6 antennae with one cable each, but since they are all in the same housing (Peplink 42G), sort of looks like one antenna with 6-cables).

I ordered the 20G from Doug. I really wish I had ordered the entire package from him.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me.

Peter

 

[socalrider]

Keeping this thread going, I decided to upgrade my boat connectivity in anticipation of this summer's cruising season. Last year we did okay just using cell phone hotspots (Verizon & AT&T) & a WeBoost cell booster for more distant parts of Catalina and Santa Cruz Islands. This was just barely able to get me a signal on the north side of Sta Cruz (AT&T only) - I got by but it was very tight.

I went for a somewhat simpler and less expensive system with the primary objective of getting at least *some* signal further out in the Channel Islands, and creating a more stable boat wifi network.

I ended up using Doug @ onboardwireless as well. I selected the Poynting EPNT-2 and the Peplink UBR dual model LTE router. The EPNT allows you to mount the router inside the antenna enclosure so you have extremely short connections & only need to route 12VDC to the box, not a thick bundle of coax cable. It's a directional antenna so I can get some additional gain by pointing it toward the nearest tower - this should work as I'm mostly anchoring bow & stern.

I opted for the cheaper UBR LTE modem $500 vs $1300 for the latest and greatest 5G as I suspect in these more remote areas I'm unlikely to get blazing speed no matter what, and the ability to bond together signals from 2 carriers could help me get a more stable signal in some cases. I can always upgrade later if need be. I'll update once I have it up and running if there's interest.